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Please
include Israel's captive soldiers in your tefillot: Zecharia Shlomo
ben Miriam Baumel, Tzvi ben Penina Feldman, Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman ben Sarah
Katz, Ron ben Batya Arad, Guy ben Rina Chever, Gilad ben Aviva Shalit. Wednesday, 2 Nisan 5770 – March 17, 2010 The first topic discussed in Parashat Vayikra is the korban ola, or burnt-offering, the voluntary sacrifice that was entirely burned
on the altar. The Torah instructs that
the kohanim must skin the slaughtered animal and
dissect it (“hefshet ve-nitu’ach”), at which point the various parts of
the animal are arranged on the fire on the altar. Interestingly, the Torah writes before
instructing that the animal parts be placed on the altar, “The sons of
Aharon, the kohanim shall place fire on the altar, and shall
arrange wood on the fire” (1:7). This
refers to the halakha known as the ma’arakha, the logs of
wood that the kohanim were instructed to place on the altar
each day for the purpose of sustaining the fire (see Vayikra 6:5). The obvious question arises as to why the
Torah makes mention of this halakha here, in the context of the instructions
regarding the voluntary ola offering. The
Ramban, in his Torah commentary, explains that the Torah sought to
distinguish between the voluntary ola offering
and the tamid,
the mandatory ola sacrifice that was brought twice each day. As the Gemara discusses in Masekhet Yoma
(33a), the kohanim were required to arrange wood on the altar each
morning before tending to the morning tamid sacrifice. One might have thought that before every
personal, voluntary tamid, too, it was required to add firewood to
the altar before the kohanim slaughter the sacrifice. The Torah therefore speaks of the ma’arakha only after it describes the procedure of slaughtering, skinning and
dissecting the korban, indicating that the kohanim do not have to add firewood to the altar before they begin tending
to the ola. Still,
the question remains as to why this verse is necessary at all. As Malbim notes, arranging the ma’arakha was done
each morning so there would be sufficient firewood for the day’s offerings,
and, in any event, the kohanim were
required to ensure a constant presence of fire on the altar (“eish
tamid tukad al ha-mizbei’ach lo tikhbeh” – Vayikra 6:6). There was thus always a fire on the
altar. Why, then, did the Torah write
that the kohanim must place wood upon the altar before placing a
voluntary ola
offering on the altar? Rashi, in his commentary to
Masekhet Yoma (27b), suggests a simple explanation of this verse. He writes that the Torah actually refers
here to the arranging of the ma’arakha that took place each morning,
before the offering of the tamid.
Before the Torah could command placing an animal sacrifice upon the
altar where it would be burned, it must first inform us that a fire would be
constantly burning on the altar. The
command regarding the ma’arakha is presented only later, in Parashat
Tzav, and therefore the Torah interjected here in Parashat Vayikra with a
brief comment that the kohanim were required to place a large pile of
wood on the altar each morning in order to sustain the fire. This information was necessary for us to
know before the Torah could then proceed to command that the fats and meat of
the ola must be burned on the altar. Malbim suggests a different
explanation. According to one view in
the Torat Kohanim (Tzav, 2:10), during the forty years in the
wilderness, the kohanim would extinguish the fire on the altar when
the time came to disembark and journey.
(According to the other view, the flame continued burning even during
travel.) If so, Malbim writes, then we
could perhaps explain this verse here in Parashat Vayikra. It may have happened on occasion that the nation
would encamp during the afternoon hours, after the final time for offering
the morning tamid sacrifice,
and a person would then show up in the Mishkan with a voluntary
ola offering. In such a
situation, there was no fire on the altar to burn the sacrifice, since the
normal rituals, including placing the ma’arakha, had not been
performed that day. Regarding such a
situation, perhaps, the Torah writes that the kohanim must first place
wood on the altar and kindle a flame before they proceed to place the
sacrifice on the altar. Although
normally this would not be necessary, since in any event the kohanim ensured a constant presence of fire on the altar, it became
necessary in the situation of midday encampment, when an individual brought
an ola before the fire on the altar was
rekindled. David Silverberg |
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